Johan Jönson (born 1966) is one of Sweden’s most prominent poets, with two previous nominations for the Nordic Council Literature Prize on his merit list. He received the first nomination in 2008 for his breakthrough work, the poetry collection Efter arbetsschema. Ten years later it was time again, then with Marginalia/Xterminalia. His nominated work for the 2024 prize is called Nollamorfa and is published by Albert Bonniers Förlag.
Excerpt from the rationale:
In Nollamorfa, Johan Jönson’s latest and twenty-first poetry collection, we meet a man who retired from his job as a janitor a few years ago. He now suffers from Parkinson’s-related dementia, and we’re with him during his final days in a nursing home. His confused memories, thoughts, and impressions wander down the middle of the pages of the book in short lines, often fragmented into single sounds and syllables. On the right-hand side of the book is a text in italics where the man’s carers and relatives try awkwardly to reach him. This back-and-forth lasts until the end, his death – the countdown to zero in Jönson’s authorship, referring back to his idea that “poetry is zero”.
Kim Simonsen (born in 1970) has written seven books, and his works have been translated into Danish, Macedonian, and soon also into Italian, Hungarian, and English. His texts have been published in journals and magazines across the world. In 2014, he won the national literature prize in the Faroe Islands. Simonsen has been nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2024 with his poetry collection Lívfrøðiliga samansetingin í einum dropa av havvatni minnir um blóðið í mínum æðrum (in English: “The Biological Composition of a Drop of Seawater Resembles the Blood in my Veins”), published by Verksmiðjan.
Excerpt from the rationale:
…a quiet work, written shortly after the passing of the poet’s father. In the wake of this event, the poetic persona walks around in the landscape of childhood, an unnamed Faroese village, and processes the grief.
The increasing light of the winter landscape, the changing weather, storms, frost, and fog, envelop the poems and unite them with nature’s cyclical movements, small and large. The sea and the waves and the droplets, the sea foam, the frozen slippery roads, the animals’ breaths – visible in the frosty weather – all evoke connections, continuous changes, and emergences.
Johan Jönson will be reading in Swedish, and Kim Simonsen in Faroese and English. This event is organized in collaboration with Nordic Culture Point.
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